For folks educated way past their raisin' ... "Praecipitatum verius quam editum" --- By the Woulda-been Poet Lariat of the Shoulda-Been State of Sequoyah.

Friday, February 02, 2007

He's got the whole world in His hands, He's got the whole world in His hands, He's got the whole world in His hands but He's wearing asbestos gloves

Wakeup call. God help us help ourselves. But Gawdlemighty, I wish the goldarn AP would've quoted ANYBODY was Jacques Chirac. Not because he's necessarily wrong, but because too many people in this country will stop reading the story below immediately.

You know, before this is all said and done, those who take actions that harm the planet will be treated like the criminals they are. Crimes against the planet will be seen, finally, as crimes against humanity -- and a sin against God and His creation.

Nucularize them NASCAR cars!

--ER

By JOHN LEICESTERAssociated Press Writer

PARIS (AP) - The bleak outlook of a major new report on climate change shifted the onus onto governments, even mankind, to stop prevaricating and truly act, with dire warnings Friday from around the world that drastic, rapid change is needed _ not least from the United States.

"We are on the historic threshhold of the irreversible," warned French President Jacques Chirac, who called for an economic and political "revolution" to save the planet.

"While climate changes run like a rabbit, world politics move like a snail: either we accelerate or we risk a disaster," said Italy's environment minister, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio.

Campaigners and governments pressed industrial nations, some specifically naming the United States, to significantly cut greenhouse-gas emissions. Others said the threat was not simply to the environment, but to international peace, prosperity and development.

See, here's where I'm an ignert R. It's because I haven't made myself a student of the science behind the argments one way or another. That's slovenly on my part.

It seems incongruous (sp?) that as a Christian I'm not concerned about the planet. But I've read my Revelation -- I'm thinking His end for the earth is a whole lot more definitive than what humanity is doing to Mother Nature.

I guess it's just a fatalistic attitude. Even as I type, I see the nonsense in what I'm saying. Still, I can't seem to get fired up about global warming.

Often, apathy is more dangerous than being wrong. I'm a poster child on this issue.

George W. also buys into the policy that the "Final Days" are the "final answer" to global warming and all "green" issues. Matthew 24:36 says "But as to that day and the exact time no one knows--not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."So George W. knows what Christ the Son of God does not. I think that is basically basphemy.We will just kick back and put our boots up on the table and wait cause we can read the signs that only God says he can read. That makes us God does it not?Now old George W., nor his Daddy, Nor Nixon, are responsible for Global Warming. Maybe Ike should take a chunk of the blame, having built the Interstate Highway system rather than a National transportation system.I am to blame, and ER is to blame, Mark, and tracy and etc.Whatever has happened in the past, the accelerated Global Warming is here. Of course we don't really know what that means except in very general terms. First it will get Warm and then Hot, but not everywhere and not all at the same time. Then because the ameleorating (sic) effects of the ocean currents will be disrupted it will get cold in Europe and Asia, and Canada again, say in 50 to 150 years. Boom, another Ice Age. The sea levels that will have gone up a hundred feet or so will go down 500 feet or so as they have in the past. Lose some countries to Ice get some new countries from the sea.

My boy Inhoff says attacking global warming will ruin our economy. I suppose just riding it out to the end won't.

Well, after hearing a panel discussion on the IPCC report this afternoon, I can tell you what the leading climatologists and meteorologists in the state say, including one local scientist who is part of the IPCC working group:

Oklahoma specifically, and the southern parts of the U.S. in general, are in for another profound drought in the short-term future.

Our water supplies are at risk. We need to get serious about protecting our water resources and not be so eager to sell to other states. The towns that are served by the Arbuckle Simpson Aquifer in particular are at risk because it is a closed system -- replenished only by rainfall. Less rainfall means less water going into the aquifer. Less water going in, ironically, means more water coming out of the aquifer to meet demand. Like balancing a checkbook, we can't take out more than what comes in.

There's good, solid scientific data showing that we'll have shorter winters, earlier springs, longer growing seasons. Sounds OK, right? Until you realize that a longer growing season means more water will be evaporated through plant transpiration.

There will be earlier maturation of winter wheat, earlier flowering of orchard crops and more frequent late freezes, damaging Oklahoma crops, according to Ken Crawford, Oklahoma's state climatologist.

In 1984 I wrote some articles about acid rain falling across Oklahoma because of contaminants in the air from smoke stacks in the U.S. southwest and parts of Mexico. People laughed then, saying that was crazy talk. Too much wind in Oklahoma for pollutants to cause US any problems, they said.

The coming drought is expected to be worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Right now they can't pinpoint exactly where the hardest hit areas will be.

We can't afford to be apathetic. Even if we stopped all human contributions to the greenhouse gases right this very minute, climate changes around the world will continue to raise the global temperatures. There is no question that the increases match up with the human use of fossil fuels, starting with the industrial age.

The irony? At another meeting last night the National Weather Service staff did a quick scan of the parking lot from an upper-floor window. Not a scientific poll by any stretch, but a simple count out the window. Fully 70 percent of the cars in the parking lot were SUVs or other cars that got less than 22 mpg on average.

One thing about Oklahoma is that we done already blown away once. That's why we have tens of thousands of farm lakes and ponds and every possible reservoir built that could be built Next step is to keep them from evaporating too much.We should try a trick they use in Ethiopia, duckweed.http://www.mobot.org/jwcross/duckweed/duckweed.htmAs for new fresh water supplies, well one thing about the melting of permafrost and glaciers is that it is fresh water. Canada and Alaska have about 60% of all of that kind of fresh water in the Northern hemisphere. Canada is to water what Saudia Arabia is to oil.We should be nicer to them I think.

Sigh. "End Times." I've spent my whole life, thanks to my upbringing, with the "End Times" lurking like a shadow in the back of my mind, all because of an elaborate scheme drawn up by a couple of 19th-century theologians, amplified and popularized by C.I. Scofield -- based on a handful of verses in the Bible, colored by fanciful interpretations of the uninterpretable book of the Revelation, which Martin Luther himself found so bizarre that he said he wished it had not been made part of the canon of Scripture.

This "End Time" worldview, admittedly seen as acdeptibe because the first Christians were apocalypticists, is at the root of most of the disregard and disdain than so many Christians have for this planet. Well, I repent of my hubris and my acting like I knew what God wants when I didn't. The first Christians were wrong: Jesus did not come back in their luifetime (unless you believe, as some Cristians do, that the coming of the Holy Spirit *was* the Second Coming, or, like others, that the Church itself, as the Body of Christ, represents the Second Coming).

May we all repent, and repent again, and again, before we, in fact, do bring about the end of time as we -- only we, humans -- know it. Because this planet has been here a helluva long time and it ain't going nowhere. But we sure will if we don't get our act together.

About Me

A Yankee editor friend called me an "erudite redneck." That about sums it up. WHAT I'M READING .....
GORE VIDAL, "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated" (New York: Thunder's Mouth, 2002).
NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS, "The Last Temptation of Christ" (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960).